Cyber War Will Not Take Place

“…most notably with Russian interference in the US presidential election in 2016, but also with attacks on countries such as Estonia and Georgia (Rid 2012, 5–32; 12–15).1 More recently, the hacking attack into the email system of the Norwegian parliament in August 2020 was attributed to Russian…”

“Although it had only limited effects, it is considered one of the most sophisticated known cyberattacks to date.(32) The worm damaged the centrifuges slowly, making Iranian operators believe that the centrifuges were running normally(33) whilst evading anti-virus software.”

“For example, Rid (2012) views cyber conflict as akin to subversion, sabotage, or spying.”

“In Georgia in 2008 the aim was to spread anti-govern-ment propaganda and disrupt public service websites during the conflict with Russia in that year (Rid, 2013, p. 7).”

“[4] It works as an intellectual short cut, but the traditional military thinking fails to acknowledge the unity tenets of cyber.”

“Since definitive actor attribution in cyberattacks is often difficult (see Rid, 2013), these four measures were converted into a binary measure.”

“Rid (2012) suggests that there are incentives for governments and fi rms to keep cyber intrusion secret “ lest they would expose their vulnerabilities and damage their reputation as a place for secure investment ” (pp. 28 – 29).”

“51 The most common type was the use of botnets, and most often they attacked networks located in Turkey, Russia, and neighbouring states.”

“Whether or not it represents an effective means to pursue policy is open to question (Brenner and Lindsay 2015; Gartzke 2013; Rid 2012; Valeriano and Maness 2015; Lonsdale 2016).”

“As Thomas Rid has argued, most online attacks lack a ‘kinetic’ (physical damage) element and therefore cannot be seen as warranting a state-based response, but are instead used to justify expenditures on ICT infrastructure (Rid, 2012).”

“That is why the theory of securitization introduced by Buzan, Weaver and De Wilde can be useful to draw the link between a national security and cyber domain.(33)”

“Finally, they cause physical damage only indirectly through the targeted computer’s potential to cause wider damage – that is, second- and third-order effects (Rid, 2013, pp. 12, 45).”

“Computer science professor and cyber expert, Neil Rowe (2007, 2008, 2010, 2011), for example, has published several papers raising an alarm that the weapons and tactics frequently and (from the standpoint of ethics, at least) unreflectively envisioned as part of any routine preparation to wage or…”

“Critics argue that the risk of cyber war is overblown, because truly devastating cyber attacks will be extremely difficult to execute (Gartzke, 2013; Rid, 2013); others worry that the US military and civilian economy is at risk of a cyber Pearl Harbor that will have catastrophic physical implications.”

“These studies have mainly focused on AI capability [8], [19], [20], [21], [22], [23], [24], [25], [26], [27], [28], [29], cyber capability [30], [31], [32], [33], [34], [35], [36], [37], [38], [39], [40], space capability [9], [36], [41], [42], [43], and ‘command, control, communications,…”

“( Zimet & Barry, 2009; Libicki, 2012; Rid, 2012a) The same applies to the civilian sector.”

“…weaken or destroy a government or military system; espionage is defined as an attempt to penetrate a hostile system to extract sensitive or protected information; and subversion is defined as a deliberate attempt to undermine the authority, integrity, and constitution of the authority (Rid, 2012).”

“14 This evolution-revolution distinction glosses over much nuance.”

“Other authors, however, point out that the use of these tools in the imminent future is limited (Gartzke, 2013; Gartzke & Lindsay, 2015; Rid 2012; 2013; Valeriano & Maness 2014; 2015).”

“Nevertheless the hostility, self-sufficiency of cyber weaponry and its particular role in conventional conflicts remains a topic of heated dispute (Leed, 2013; Libicki, 2013; Rid, 2013).”

“The cyber attack within Operation Orchard has been described as an integral part of the kinetic attack [29].”

“Researchers, politicians, and journalists have long been fascinated by ‘cyberwar’ – the spectre of armed conflict between nations spilling over into attacks conducted over the Internet [59].”

“Rid’s argument is that because cyber-attacks are code-on-code, their impacts are primarily contained to the cyber realm [48].”

“Scholarly research on conceptualizations and practices of ‘cyber war’ has seen sharp disagreements over the meaning and significance of cyber operations in today’s warfare theories and practices (Rid 2012; Kello 2013; Delerue 2020; Jacobsen 2021; Neuman 2021).”

“” 55 According to Lennart Maschmeyer, cyber operations face an operational trilemma, where the three variables of speed, intensity of effect, and control are negatively correlated.”

“…literature in international relations on the threat posed by cyber (Kostyuk and Wayne, 2021; Kostyuk and Zhukov, 2019; Lindsay and Gartzke, 2022; Rid, 2012; Valeriano and Maness, 2015), and that public opinion is important to how the public under-stands cyber (Arsenault et al., forthcoming;…”

“Most threat activity in cyberspace is more like intelligence than warfare (Lindsay, 2021; Rid, 2012; Rovner, 2019).”

“The resulting debates consider issues like the nature of cyber weapons,[2,3] the possibility of cyber war[4,5] the role of norms of responsible behavior [6,7] and, most importantly for this paper, the role of private actors in developing and deploying offensive cyber technology.”

“Others such as Rid (2012) believe that cyber war will not take place.”

“We will use a taxonomy derived from Rid [60], with the following categories: 8 >>>< >>>: Criminal”

“In the second approach, the changes in military technology appear to be a traditional element used to define cybersecurity (Rid, 2012, pp. 5-32; Stone, 2013, pp. 101-108; Libicki, 2009, p. 52; Dillon, 2002, pp. 71-79).”

“More recently, the question has become more contended, in the context of skepticism that cyber threats in general are being “over-hyped,” although some skepticism is grounded in concerns over military agenda-setting rather than conceptual rigor [31] [4] [17].”

“…(2015) points out that kinetic warfare doctrines fail to translate effectively into cyber operations because these operations operate without clear territory and are difficult to trace to their origins, and do not distinguish between military and civilian targets (Dunn Cavelty, 2014; Rid, 2012).”

“1 For decades, governments have leveraged hackers and hacktivists as proxies for sub-version (Maschmeyer, 2021: 56), coercion (Wilner et al., 2024: 143), sabotage (Buchanan, 2020: 129; Rid, 2011: 5), and intelligence collection as part of a competitive race against adversaries (Rovner, 2019).”

“Rid (2012) contended that cyber threats and fears of cyber war are overstated.”

“The cybersecurity literature is sceptical that cyberattacks alter the balance of power or fundamentally change warfare (Gartzke 2013; Rid 2013; Valeriano and Maness 2015).”

“…the absence of physical violence and human casualties from cybercon fl icts, the temporary e ff ects of cyberoperations, and the rarity of cybercoercion in cyberincidents (Craig and Valeriano 2018, 89 – 93; Gartzke 2013, 57 – 58; Harknett and Smeets 2022, 538; Rid 2012; Valer-iano and Maness 2015).”

“There is also evidence of cyberattacks taking place in response to offline events, such as physical conflicts between nations (Rid 2013) or repressive actions by governments against minority groups (Jordan and Taylor 2004).”

“Another book "Cyber War Will Not Take Place" by Thomas Rid outlines the case that actual cyber warfare— which frequently resembles sabotage, espionage, or subversion—is unlikely to occur and emphasises the need to distinguish cyber-attacks from conventional warfare (Rid, 2012).”

“Dari fenomena dan peristiwa penyerangan hingga berada pada tingkat perang cyber yang telah menyerang negara Indonesia, maka terdapat 3 jenis ancaman perang cyber yang dapat terjadi yaitu sabotase, spionase dan subversi (Rid, 2012).”

“The Saudi Aramco is the world’s leading oil producer and the organization added that it halted the connections of its electronic systems to the outer world to avoid further cyber attacks [8].”

“All these studies recognize the effects of cyber technology on warfare and strategic choices, yet many argue that the prospect of a full-scale cyber war is limited.(36) An under-explored topic within the cyber warfare literature address public opinion.”

“According to Rid (2013) “cyber war will not take place” – for him, cyber war is a mythos, because war contains targeted violence against people, which has not existed in previous digital attacks.”

“The frequency of attacks spiked for a short period only, and their effects and overall costs appear to be still limited (cf. Rid 2012; Gartzke 2013).”